Does it Make Sense to Buy Local?
We all learn in Econ 101 that there's nothing inherently beneficial about buying locally produced goods. That's not to say that you can't derive happiness from supporting local growers or that you can't prefer the taste of a local strawberry to one from the side of the country, but those are just personal preferences that have nothing to do with the actual economics of localization. Nevertheless, there's a growing trend toward buying local among those who consider themselves environmentally and socially conscious.
Over at Coyote Blog, Warren Meyer talks about some of the significant reasons NOT to push for localization of markets: Sustainability Through Poverty. I especially like his first point:
It doesn't work. The total energy used for transport, say of food products, is a small percentage of the total energy used in the total production process. The energy transportation budget is generally smaller than efficiency gains from scale or from optimizing location. For example, a wheat farm in Arizona on 50 acres is going to use a lot more energy (and water, and fertilizer, and manpower) than a wheat farm on a thousand acres in North Dakota.
To elaborate on that a little, I would say that people who think they're "reducing their carbon footprint" by buying local are most likely mistaken. If, as Warren points out above, more energy is used to produce food in a nearby location that's less suited to such production than another place far away, you're actually causing MORE carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere when you buy local. Increased use of energy is reflected in higher prices. So it probably makes more sense to buy whatever is cheapest if you want to cut back on your carbon dioxide contribution. Just something to think about.
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Honor Veterans…But Don’t Claim They’re Defending Our Freedom
Veterans Day was a few days ago, and as usual, I kept hearing that perennial mindless refrain (uttered as if by Pavlovian response), that we should "honor veterans because they're over there fighting for our freedom and keeping us safe."
Excuse me, but no, they're not.
Our troops are in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting for Afghanistan's and Iraq's freedom (regardless of whether they want it) and trying to keep the Afghan and Iraqi people safe (even if it's actually having the opposite effect). There is NOTHING our troops are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq (or in any other country) that is even remotely promoting American freedom and safety (I served in Afghanistan, and I assure you, we were not protecting your right to free speech or making sure you slept safe at night). On the contrary, our actions in both theaters have made us demonstrably LESS safe since we continue to breed resentment and create more terrorist recruits determined to do us harm. And last I checked, our freedoms were being rapidly eroded by a Bush administration consumed by the darkness of totalitarianism and using a nonsensical and Orwellian "War on Terror" to justify the emerging police state.
Don't get me wrong--I don't blame the troops for any of this. I blame the political leadership. The troops are simply doing what they agreed to do when they signed up. They're fulfilling legally binding employment contracts, a noble and honorable thing. They should be honored because, deep down, they really did join because they thought they would get a chance to defend our freedom and keep us safe. It's not their fault they ended up being used as tools to accomplish some fanatical neoconservative reordering of the Middle East in a grand scheme that Bush believes was hand delivered to him by some omnipotent being. I mean, they really couldn't have seen that one coming, especially when most of them sign on the dotted line right out of high school (or even during their senior year like I did).
I find it particularly abhorrent that our government continues to send troops into Afghanistan to fight al Qaida and the Taliban while simultaneously empowering those enemies by trying to shut down opium farming in the country. Our failed war on drugs apparently hasn't caused enough ruin in our own country, so we felt the need to export that ruin to a country that could actually emerge as a prosperous and peaceful place if it wasn't for the fact that Western politicians with a poor grasp of human nature and an even worse grasp of economics have decided that certain substances, including heroin, must be banned by the coercive state.
So yes, honor veterans if you like, but do it for the right reasons. And let's get some folks elected (like, say, Ron Paul) who will stop putting the people that signed up to defend America and the Constitution in the position of having to carry out self-defeating (and very un-American) foreign policy around the world.
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Kidneys on eBay?
Don Boudreaux over at Cafe Hayek has a nice little bit about legalizing organ sales, with which I wholeheartedly agree:
Voters no doubt do feel repugnance at commerce in such things. But one question is: how much? When voters are asked to cast a ballot about such things, they do so largely free of charge -- that is, they get to express their opinions on the cheap, without any obligation to reflect seriously upon the issue before them. I wonder how likely it is that any randomly chosen voter would let repugnance prevent him from buying a kidney if such commerce were necessary to save the life of his child or his wife or one of his parents?
How insane is it that our supposedly free country, because of voters' irrational emotions, bans the sale of things that could save so many lives? Besides, what happens when you ban something that the market demands? It simply creates a dangerous black market and greatly increases the price of that particular good.
Just more evidence that democracy, to the extent that a mere 51% of voters can vote away our rights and empower a totalitarian political elite, is a truly flawed and dangerous system. Democracy is just totalitarianism in which the all-powerful dictators are 'chosen' by a certain portion of the population.
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An Austrian Take on the Credit Crunch
A reader has requested that I share any Austrian analyses of the current credit crunch that I've run across (for those of you wondering why Arnold Schwarzenegger has anything to do with the financial markets, I'm referring of course to the Austrian School of economics as developed by Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, and certain other libertarian thinkers).
Now, I'm not well-versed enough in finance to be able to comment on the technical details of the following pieces, but I can summarize them as follows: the current problems in the financial markets and the overall economy are the result of deviations from the free market by a meddling government. The mandated use of fiat money, credit injections (money out of thin air) by the Fed, and other anti-market measures, rather than smoothing out boom-bust cycles of the free market as their proponents claim, have in fact been causing the cycles and making the resulting recessions more severe and prolonged than anything a truly free market would produce. The market is naturally self-correcting, but the Fed and other central banks around the world have been wreaking havoc on the market processes that would otherwise be making us prosperous with only minimal business cycles.
Enjoy!
The Worst Recession in 25 years?
And here's a good reading list for the Austrian view of finance and central banking in general: Readings for the Crisis
If anyone has any expertise in this field (Jimmy), or even if you don't, feel free to discuss these items in the comments--you can even include your own links to good resources.
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Georgia Governor to do Bible Rain Dance?
I don't think this even needs further comment:
Georgia Plans Service to Pray for Rain
Okay, one quick comment: from here on out, Georgia is officially that weird, maladjusted guy that tags along with you at parties and who you pretend you don't know.
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Ron Paul’s $4M Day
I know it's been a couple days, so everyone probably already saw this in the news, but Ron Paul succeeded in collecting over $4M on November 5th (Guy Fawkes Day). This organic grassroots effort (average donation was $103), which the campaign didn't even know about at first, resulted in the largest single day haul of any Republican in history, and is behind only Hillary and Obama for most money raised in a single day.
Didn't hit the $10M goal, but hey, that was a pretty tall order. Congressman Paul has now (as of 11/8/07 at 3:30 ET) raised $7.68M of his 4th quarter goal of $12M. Yes, his fund raising ability is certainly blowing some minds around the country. But his ability to raise money is nothing more than a function of the fervor and dedication of his supporters--people who are tired of a powerful, intrusive government that sends kids to die in wars of aggression, confiscates large portions of our income, prints money out of thin air, looks down its gargantuan nose at the concept of civil liberties, and regulates every aspect of our lives, businesses, and transactions with others. Ron Paul is the only person outside of the Libertarian Party (which is sadly kept off the ballot in many states) that appears to offer a way out of the oppression that Republicans and Democrats have created over the past century.
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Ron Paul Surge: A November 5th to Remember
Remember, remember, the 5th of November
The gunpowder treason and plot
I know of no reason
the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot
You all know this verse by now (and if not, you shouldn't admit it). It's the protagonist's eerie refrain in V for Vendetta, the anti-statist movie based on the graphic novel. Supporters of liberty around the world are organizing pro-freedom events for today, November 5, 2007. But there is one in particular that I recommend taking part in if at all possible--and you don't even have to leave the house (you lazy bastard).
For a couple of months now, Ron Paul supporters have been spontaneously organizing (as they always do) to stage a massive one-day donation to the campaign. The goal is to get 100,000 people to each donate at least $100 to reach a grand total of $10M in a single day--an unprecedented and inspiring achievement.
There is a site up that is tracking the donations (not just today's but for the whole 4th quarter) . I've watched it rocket up by over $1M in just the last few minutes! I've never seen anything like it. People all over the country willing to give enormous amounts of money to a candidate that the media continues to deride as 'fringe.' That's the power of the freedom message. Maybe Ron Paul's not the perfect libertarian (or at least he can't appear to be one and still hope to get the GOP nod), but somehow he's lit a fire in this country. He's started (pardon the cliche) a revolution. He's shown the country that the choice doesn't have to be between conservative and liberal (both of whom are dangerous in different ways). He's shown that the choice can be one between liberty and oppression. Ron Paul understands the coercive nature of both American conservatism (coercive with regard to civil liberties and foreign policy) and American liberalism (coercive with regard to economics).
Romney, Giuliani, McCain, and Thompson are fighting over who can promise to nuke the most foreign countries, open the most new Gitmos, and devise the most tyrannical "homeland security" measures. Hillary, Obama, and Edwards are fighting over who can bring the most despicable version of socialism to America while not even considering the idea of getting our troops out of Iraq anytime this century. The Democrats and the GOP are simply two different faces of tyranny and coercion. The Libertarian Party will eventually rise to power to, ironically, destroy the very power it seeks and free the country. There are those in the LP who are not big fans of Ron Paul, but as far as I'm concerned, he has done more in the past year to spur a passion for libertarian philosophy than any official LP effort. Does the LP deserve every freedom lover's support? Absolutely. But so does Ron Paul, and I urge you to go to his campaign site right now and contribute at least a little something. This is going to make history, and it's going to give Ron Paul the funds he needs to really shake up the nature of electoral politics in this country.
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